DC HOSA Leadership Hub

Chapter officer or state officer — or thinking about becoming one?

You’re in the right place. This Hub turns what officers actually do into short, usable cards — not more reading.

DC HOSA · Washington, DC · 2026–27

Leadership, one rung at a time.

Five capability domains, three levels each. Start where you are and the next rung is visible from day one — whether you joined last week or you are running the affiliate.

The ladder

Domains run down. Levels run across. Every card in the Hub sits in exactly one cell.

DomainLead YourselfWhat do I do?Lead a TeamHow do I get a group to do it?Lead BeyondHow do I change something outside this room?
Self

Knowing your strengths, setting goals that survive contact, staying steady.

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Voice

Being understood — speaking, presenting, writing, advocating.

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Team

Working with people, and getting a group to function.

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Governance

Running meetings, and understanding how the organization works.

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Community

Health literacy, service, and acting on what a neighbourhood needs.

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Start here

Three cards at Lead Yourself. Each one is short, and each one is used in an actual chapter meeting rather than read and filed.

Why You Show Up

Lead YourselfSelfEMPOWER20 min

People do not keep showing up because they were told to. Three things keep them coming back — having some say in what they do, feeling like they are getting better at it, and belonging to the people doing it. Take any one away and attendance drops, whatever the programming looks like.

Autonomyhaving some say Competencegetting visibly better Relatednessbelonging to the people stays take any one awayand attendance drops
Autonomy — having some say

Ask who wants to own something before assigning it. Share the goal and the constraints, then leave the method to them.

  • "I'd like someone to lead the community service planning — who wants to own this, and what would you need?" rather than "Alex, you're doing community service planning."
  • "What do you think we should do here?" before "Here's what I think we should do."
  • Kills it: micromanaging a task you delegated, overriding a decision without explaining why, handing out yes/no jobs that are never real ownership.
Competence — getting visibly better

Calibrate the task just above where someone currently is. Too easy and they drift; too hard and they shut down.

  • Stretch assignments for members who have mastered their current role — with the support said out loud.
  • Break big tasks down for new members. Small wins are what build the base.
  • Name specific growth in public: "I want everyone to know how that was handled this week — that was not easy, and it was excellent."
Relatedness — belonging to the people

Members who feel they belong show up, contribute, and recruit. Members who do not quietly disappear.

  • Learn every member's name and one specific thing about them within three meetings.
  • Connect members to each other, not only to you: "Have you met — you two should talk about this."
  • Make the mission concrete: name the ward, the event, the people reached. Specificity beats abstraction.
  • Missing two consecutive meetings with no contact is a belonging signal, not an attendance one. Reach out personally within 48 hours.
Do this
  1. Pick one member who has been doing the same task for more than two months. Decide whether they are still growing.
  2. Look at your last three chapter decisions and count how much of the input was yours versus the team's.
  3. Transfer one decision to a member this week, and say what the constraints are rather than how to do it.

Where it shows up: Officer team meetings, and the recruitment conversation in the first month of the year.

Coach note
Officers hear this as three things to add. It is usually one thing to stop. Ask which of the three they already do well, and protect that before adding another.
Grounded in
RSelf-Determination Theory — autonomy, competence, relatedness
Deci & Ryan. Relatedness section draws on Baumeister & Leary (1995); the challenge-skill calibration draws on Csikszentmihalyi.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/self.html#self-why-you-show-up  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Self

Not Yet

Lead YourselfSelfEMPOWER10 min

How you explain a setback to yourself decides what you do next. Treating it as a fixed limit closes the door. Treating it as a current state with a trajectory keeps it open, and the difference often comes down to one word.

The word

"I'm not good at this yet." The word yet frames a current state with an implied path. Without it, the sentence is a verdict.

Where it shows up in HOSA
  • Not placing at a competition — "I'm just not talented" versus "what specifically can I work on before the next one?"
  • When feedback stings — hearing "you're not good enough" versus hearing a specific path to better.
  • When someone else succeeds — feeling threatened versus getting curious about how they got there.
Do this
  1. Finish this sentence honestly: "I'm not good at ___ yet."
  2. Write the one thing you are actively doing to build it. If nothing, that is the real finding.

Where it shows up: After any competition result, and in the first officer debrief of the year.

Coach note
Do not use this to talk a member out of disappointment. Let the disappointment be real first — the reframe only works after it has been heard.
Grounded in
RMindset — Carol Dweck
Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Large replication studies have found growth-mindset interventions produce small average effects, smaller than the original work suggested. Present it as a useful reframe, not as a reliable performance lever.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/self.html#self-not-yet  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Self

The Debrief

Lead YourselfTeamBUILD20 min

Experience on its own does not teach. A competition where everyone performs and then moves on produces far less than the same competition followed by twenty structured minutes. Most of the learning from a HOSA event is in the debrief, not the event.

Timing

Three windows, each doing a different job.

  • Within 24 hours — how did it feel. This has to happen while the feeling is still fresh.
  • Within 48 hours — what worked, what changes, what the specific next step is.
  • Within a week — each participant writes their own reflection down.
Who runs it

The person leading facilitates rather than evaluates. Ask questions, name what you observed, and hold back recommendations until after the group has done its own analysis.

Do this
  1. Book the 48-hour slot before the event happens, not after.
  2. Open by stating one thing you personally got wrong, before anyone else speaks.
  3. Close with one named change, one owner, and one date.

Where it shows up: After SLC, after any chapter event, and after an officer team misses something.

Coach note
The chair naming their own mistake first is the mechanism, not a nicety. Teams read whether it is safe to be honest from what the person in charge does in the first sixty seconds.
Grounded in
RPsychological safety and the failure debrief
Edmondson (1999), Administrative Science Quarterly. Reflection-on-experience framing after Kolb (1984); written reflection after Pennebaker (1997).
The retention comparison between written and verbal reflection that appeared in the original build has been removed — the figure could not be sourced.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/team.html#team-debrief  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Team